Counting Threads

You might have read in the news recently, that certain Big Name high street retailers claim their Egyptian Cotton sheets have a higher thread count than they actually do. The reports follow a BBC2 programme (What To Buy And Why), in which investigators examined a number of samples sold by the retail giants. Amongst their findings were sheets with a 346TC (labelled as 1200TC). Many of the 1000 Thread Count sheets on offer had a true count of 780 or less (452 being one of the lowest).

As the programme correctly pointed out, the term thread count refers to the number of single or individual threads of yarn woven together per square inch of fabric.

What they discovered was “multiple individual threads were twisted together to make a yarn…”

Single thread is delicate and therefore much harder to weave, but the end result is outstanding. Certain manufacturers attempt to cut costs (and corners) by twisting four single threads together before weaving as ‘fourfold yarn’, producing an inferior result.